There’s no secret, really, is there? The one percent get their wealth by exploiting the rest of us, by paying us less in wages than the value of what we produce. This is not, however, the kind of thing that Sam Wilkin deals with here, since he is really concerned, not with how the capitalist class in general become rich, but with how and why some capitalists, in contrast to others, become very rich indeed. His answer is by ‘gaming the system’: by having the government introduce regulations that make competition difficult, and by making it more or less impossible for companies, especially banks, to lose money.

A by no means insignificant reason for the lamentable condition of the international working-class movement is to be sought in the baneful influence of events in Russia. Hypnotised by its mythical Socialist character, bull-dozed by its offspring, the Communist International, thousands of militant workers have fallen victims to its spell. Fortunately, numbers of workers everywhere, under the hard blows of reality, are beginning to come to their senses. Anything that tends to hasten this process can only be welcomed, and therein lies the importance of this book. Written by a former official of the German Communist Party, it is a painstaking and scrupulous attempt to reveal the origins of Russian Bolshevism and its influence, through the Comintern, on the world Labour movement.